PARTISAN REVIEW
527
LIFTON: Jaspers says in the end, and this is what I think is ad–
mirable in his essay, that "We Germans" - and of course this is true
of any group that's been into some kind of evil - "have the task of
forming and shaping our own guilt." That, not the politicalization of
guilt, is the point. In that sense, guilt is not a n abstract thing. There's
no supernatural figure who knows a ll, is therefore objective and de–
tached in his judgment of guilt. Rather, the give and take of hIstory
involves judgments which are p artly imposed on other people, partly
internalized. The very definition of what's a betrayal in the simplest
human relationship has to do with some sort of social standard. That's
why animating guilt very much depends upon some sort of relationship
to guilt and some sort of world-view about it. There's no getting away
from it.
It
used to be simpler when we thought that psychological is–
sues were in isolation, outside of history, but we know now they're not.
MARSHALL COHEN: I'd like to separate animating guilt from the
question of collective guilt. To ta ke a trivial example, suppose I have
promised to return a book to somebody, and I don't. I start feeling
guilty.
A
nd then I do take steps to return the book to the person.
Now, it seems to me that when you talk about animating guilt you
may simply be saying that my feeling guilty became a cause or a mo–
tive of my returning the book. But equally well, it seems to me, it
might be that it's my recognition that I'd done something wrong and
my view that I ought to rectify wrongful behavior, insofa r as I can,
that is the cause of my returning the book rather than my feelings of
guilt. I 'm rather skeptical about your claim that, in general, the feeling
of guilt is the cause of compensatory or rectifying behavior.
LIFTON: What I'm talking about as animating guilt would be a
relationship to an act which would make me a slightly different per–
son. I would not just return the book to restore a harmonious balance
but rather would feel illuminated by my failure in the first case to have
returned it. Really all I'm saying is that in a certain amount of ex–
perience I've had, which I think does generalize to a degree, there's no
one cause for anyone becoming a "better" person. But guilt is part of the
energy of self-dissatisfaction which propels one to a different action
or a different relationship to events.
MARSHALL BERMAN: One of the reasons that a lot of us are re–
sisting your views about guilt is that we've seen what destructive re–
sults guilt can have in all of our own lives. You talked about a man
with whom you were dealing who, at one point, felt animating guilt
which subsequently became self-laceratin,!:!;
and futile and destructive
guilt. As Dr. Fa rber said, there are endless abysses of guilt in all of us.
Once you try to use them, how do you keep a floodgate of guilt from
opening up?
LIFTON: I don't think the floodgate is opened up in a paralyzing
way by naming what I see to be in us. I was speaking of guilt as use–
ful psychological mechanism for our sun'ival, because it's very closely
tied up with identification. It's part of our tragedy, and in a way I think
Les and I have come around to this position through different routes,
that what I'm calling animating and self-lacerating guilt get hopelessly
mixed together. Les said that what Buber calls true guilt also tends to
